Smart spliff politics

• written by Anne Schwerk & Raoul Koning

Politics ... Always a subject that is heatedly debated. Also in the Netherlands. Lately especially the drugs politics.

But before we dive into these political debates we will give you a little introduction on Dutch culture first. In the Netherlands there are coffeeshops and smartshops. Coffeeshops are places where the sale and consumption of marihuana is tolerated. Mind you, it is not legal, but tolerated. Smartshops on the other hand are shops where all other psychoactive and health related legal drugs and supplements are for sale. Think truffles (the only not banned mushroom-like substance), herbs (e.g. blue lotus, kratom), herbal ecstasies and aphrodisiacs.

In the 70’s the first coffeshops started to appear. The idea at the time was to separate the sale of soft drugs from hard drugs because hard drugs caused a lot more health related problems and criminality. In this period some cafe’s had a ‘house dealer’ providing customers with marihuana. As a result the government allowed these house dealers to be officially present and sell cannabis in some café’s. After a while these cafes were called coffeeshops and they got official licenses to sell marihuana. This was the emergence of the so-called ‘gedoogd beleid’ (tolerated policy): the sale was tolerated but not legalized.

Anne Schwerk (copyright by Else Kramer www.elsekramer.com)

It remained this way for quite some time, but some changes are to be seen lately. The rules for coffeeshops are getting tighter, more extensive and they are more strictly followed by the police. Some examples of these rules are: no sales to people under eighteen, maximum sale of 5 grams per person per day, a maximum stash of 500 grams in total allowed in and around the coffeeshop, no alcohol or hard drugs allowed and no tobacco smoking allowed. This might seem to be fairly acceptable. But if you think about it you’ll see it makes life very difficult for coffeeshops to run their business. If a coffeshop has over 400 customers a day buying several grams they have to stash more than the allowed 500 grams or they have to work with runners, who are vulnarable to robberies. If people live far away from a coffeeshop they would most often like to buy more than five grams so they don’t have to make that journey every few days. If the coffeeshop personal doesn’t have the time to check all people inside the coffeeshop for their identification they might get caught having someone under eighteen inside. If a customer carries hard drugs the coffeeshop is responsible for those drugs, but ironically they are not allowed to search their customers (if they would even want to). If people role a joint with tobacco instead of the supplied herbal tobacco substitute should they check every joint? Etcetera. If a coffeeshop violates the rules more than twice, they are usually closed for good. Ten years ago these rules were no issue. But in recent years many coffeeshops had to close because of the change in policy.

Another important issue is the fact that coffeeshops are allowed to sell marihuana but they are not allowed to buy it. This makes it very difficult for coffeeshops to run a business. They have to engage in criminal activities on a daily basis because of this weird reasoning. They are held responsible for these criminal activities, but it is the law itself that is pushing them into criminality. If the rules were getting even more tightened it would make it pretty much impossible for them to run their business.

The idea (ie wish) of the government is to lower the use of cannabis by closing down the coffeeshops. This of course is a big misconception because people don’t simply stop smoking when they can’t buy their cannabis in a coffeeshop anymore. They will go to street dealers again who also have hard drugs for sale like crack and speed, usually for not much more than the price of weed. This is exactly the opposite of what the government wanted years before. And it is exactly the opposite of what many health related institutes advise. They do however continue their policy.

Raoul Koning

The smartshop policy of the Dutch government has been a little different from the coffeeshop policy. In 1993 the first smartshop called Conscious Dreams started in Amsterdam as an art mind design center which basically functioned as a gallery selling magic mushrooms and other psychoactive herbs ‘on the side’. After that many other smartshops arose. And now there are over 100 smartshops to be found in the Netherlands. Of which over 25 alone in Amsterdam, some of them seem to function more as a tourist shop than as a smartshop though. A smartshop should cater as a good source of information for the products they are selling and preferably with a save environment to consume these products. Of all smartshops there are only a few that actually give proper information and provide a place for you to enjoy your magic mushrooms. One of those for example is the Kokopelli Conscious Dreams in Amsterdam. Remember never to buy any mushrooms in a shop where you don’t feel that the staff is knowledgeable and open to provide advice. Let them educate you about the effects until you are satisfied.

The smartshops were often the first place where new compounds like 2CB, 2CT7, GHB and methylone (MDMA-like compound) were for sale. Additionally, it was not uncommon in that time to design new chemical compounds for smartshops that were very much alike other drugs but slightly different in their chemical structure (e.g. after 2CT7 was banned they made 2CT2). This way the shops were able to sell these new drugs for a couple of months or years until the government found out about their effects and potentials and banned them. This cat-and-mouse-game continued for some time, but it has been fairly quiet lately. One of the reasons is the tighter control on the smartshops by the government. If one reviews the history of smart products it’s a constant come-and-go of different products, due to law changes and new inventions, with the magic mushroom as the most famous constant.

Often the reasons for banning a substance are quite unclear and unscientific, e g. two years ago Yohimbe (a natural aphrodisiac with not many side effects) was made illegal, while Viagra (with many known cases of even severe side effects) still remains easily available on prescription. These unclear and unscientific reasons for banning substance also apply for the recent ban on magic mushrooms.

In the beginning of 2008 a French girl aged seventeen tragically committed suicide by jumping of a bridge. This was possibly after the use of magic mushrooms but it has never been proven. Since then the rumors about the potentially life-threatening role of mushrooms started. It was hardly ever mentioned publicly that this girl was on anti-depressives and probably had had alcohol as well. In good smartshops it is routine not to sell magic mushrooms to people that are taking medication, and not to sell them to people under eighteen. The consequences were that almost every month some new media report appeared, describing horrible incidents that took place under the influence of mushrooms. Afterwards those incidences often turned out to be evoked by other reasons among which psychosis or hard drugs but not by mushrooms. Corrections in the media about this wrong information were seldom found afterwards.

In December 2008 mister Klink, minister of public health, made over 180 different species of mushrooms illegal. How he came up with the names of the list is unknown, but it was obviously not by scientific research. Many of the listed mushrooms are not even psychoactive in any way. And some that are psychoactive were not added to the list. Which shows nicely how ‘professional’ his approach is. Before he made his decision he asked his own official advisory board to research the health effects of magic mushrooms. This advisory board called ‘CAM’ advised him NOT to ban magic mushrooms because they concluded that the risks involved were so low for individual health and society that making them illegal would be too heavy a measure compared to the trouble and damage it would cause. But Klink did make the magic mushrooms illegal against the advice of many people and health related institutes.

The union for smartshops called VLOS started a legal procedure against minister Klink because they think that what Klink did is unlawful. They lost the first part of the procedure and recently they also lost the higher appeal at the higher court, which does not leave them with many options to fight the ban. This outcome does not only mean that magic mushrooms will stay illegal. It also means that with little effort the minister can add every substance to the list of illegal drugs that he wishes. He can do this without any obvious scientific evidence, which was not the case before.

This new development will probably also mean a tougher time for coffeeshops because the leading (Christian) parties in the government want them gone and might now see their ideas strengthend.

So as can be seen, the regulations of the (soft-) drug policy still remain a big subjective issue that is redefined almost every year. The leading parties of the Dutch government (and most other European countries for that matter) threaten the (drug) freedom that we have enjoyed so far. The ways they try to implement changes are often kept out of public sight and are not much talked about in the media. Or the provided information about subjects that deal with drugs is often incorrect or incomplete.

Making more drugs illegal and treating people that use drugs as criminals, doesn’t benefit anyone. Therefor this article should act as a wake up call to those that value their freedom to travel physically and mentally. Educate yourself about what your government has in stock for you. And act accordingly if possible.